Advanced Technology - Bioreactor
Three bioreactor designs, developed by NASA and Wyle Laboratories, are patented and licensed to commercial entities.
The following designs are available commercially:
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Rotating Bioreactor Cell Culture Apparatus
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High Aspect Reactor Vessel and Method of Use
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Bioreactor and Cell Culturing Processes Using the Bioreactor
Hydrodynamic Focusing Bioreactor
The bioreactor has been further developed, patented, and licensed through Wyle Life Sciences, to Celdyne Corporation in Houston, TX in a different format that may afford unique cell culture advantages. The new Hydrodynamic Focusing Bioreactor (HFB), based on the principle of hydrodynamic focusing, was designed to meet both operational and scientific requirements on orbit.
Three-dimensional cell culture and tissue engineering investigations, whether conducted on Earth or in orbit, benefit from the HFB. It is a rotating wall bioreactor that provides a unique hydrofocusing capability, simultaneously supplying a low-shear culture environment and allowing a unique "herding" of suspended cells, cell aggregates, and air bubbles.
More specifically, the HFB is a rotating dome-shaped cell culture vessel that contains an internal, rotating, viscous spinner. The vessel and viscous spinner can rotate at different speeds and in either the same or different directions. Adjusting the rotation rate results in a controllable hydrodynamic focusing force. The resultant hydrodynamic force suspends the cells in a low-shear fluid environment that supports the formation of delicate three-dimensional tissue assemblies. The three versions of the HFB vessels include the HFB-S flight unit and the HFB-40 and HFB-160 ground units.
Learn more about the HFB and related activities underway in the Advanced Programs Office / Advanced Technology Development Laboratory.
Time Varying Electromagnetic Field
Genetic expression data has revealed the ability to "turn on" those genes that are responsible for growth and "turn off" those genes that are regulatory in nature. The Time Varying Electromagnetic Field (TVEMF) makes use of this valuable insight to stimulate normal human neural cells with an electrical waveform (electrical potentials), thus facilitating and directing neural cell growth.
Learn more about the TVEMF and related activities underway in the Cellular Environmental Toxicology and NeuroPhysiology Laboratory.
Other New Technologies Now in Development
- Biosentinel System
- Engineering of Three-Dimensional Human Tissue Equivalent Muscle Constructs from Waste Fat Tissue
- Microfluidic Analysis of Biological Samples
- Three-Dimensional Transgenic Study